


Hold Hands in the Cemetery

by bachlava



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e16 Welcome to the Tombs, F/F, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-03-30 18:21:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3946951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bachlava/pseuds/bachlava
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrea and Michonne say good-bye inside the Governor's chamber. When they both get out alive, they have to figure out what comes next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fever

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to gemjam for beta reading. Any remaining errors are my own.
> 
> See end notes for warnings.

     

Milton didn’t hear her beg, at least. By the time Andrea’s mind registers the tape’s being ripped off her mouth, it's too late: Philip is locking the door behind him. She’s going down with one shred of dignity intact.  
  
She told herself when Philip caught up with her that she wouldn’t beg him. She held to that for as long as she could. But none of the brave words she repeated to herself kept their power forever. In the end, she begged.  
  
But not in front of Milton, who’s bleeding on the floor.  
  
He tries to reassure her. She’ll be able to free her hands in time, maybe.  
  
That’s not going to happen. Andrea’s not in a position to work out of the bonds well; most of the reason she’s trying is for his sake. That slender prospect can’t be reassuring him much either, because he goes on. Maybe he’ll recognize her in some way after her turns, and be affected for long enough that she can work the duct tape off her wrists and finish him before he gets too hungry.  
  
He knows that’s not what happened with Amy. Andrea’s told him as much.  
  
Or maybe he won’t turn, he offers. No pathogen has complete virulence; ebola doesn’t, the plague didn’t, HIV didn’t back in the days before there were treatments. It makes sense that some of them won’t turn, since they’re all infected and symptom-free. Didn’t Andrea see people dead of heatstroke in their cars along the highway?  
  
Of course, he acknowledges, maybe he will turn. It’s possible. But maybe Andrea will survive the bite. If there are some people who just die, there must be people who just survive. Milton doesn’t know of any, true, but he has so little information. It could happen to her.  
  
Andrea tries to smile through her tears. It doesn’t work, but she tries, the same way she’s still grasping toward the pliers. She wants to say something to make Milton feel better, but she can’t think of anything. Just for the sake of trying, she offers, “A few months after the outbreak, I met the last member of the research team at the CDC. He said that this was our extinction event. I thought about the dinosaurs and that meteor.”  
  
“The Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary?”  
  
“Is that what it’s called?”  
  
“Yeah.” Milton tries to smile, which makes the pain in his face look worse. “I loved dinosaurs when I was a kid.”  
  
“What was your favourite?”  
  
“ _Antetonitrus ingenipes_. It used to be the earliest sauropod we knew about.”  
  
“What were sauropods?”  
  
“They were giant plant-eaters with long skinny necks and big tails. Brontosaurs are the most famous ones.”  
  
“Brontosaurs, huh?”  
  
“Yes... They lived in herds. All the sauropods did.”  
  
“More like us than big lone  _T. rex_?”  
  
“I guess so. The young and the adults even ate different foods, just like mammals.”  
  
“That’s incredible.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“Where did they live?”  
  
“There are fossils in lots of places. They liked to be near water, though. The old coastlines are where you find the most.”  
  
“It’s good to be near the ocean.” Amy would probably tell her to be glad for all the times she got to walk on the sand with the warm tide swirling over her bare feet, all the times she got to see the sun set over the water.  
  
“Milton?”

 

     

 

She made her own bed.  
  
She undressed slowly, being watched, growing warm. Naked, she lay down alongside him; he was warm, he’d watched her undress, and the heat of his body washes over her, as hers washes over him, skin against skin, blood thrumming in their veins, they’re burning.  
  
She’s burning up.  
  
The pliers. Bleeding. A red film over her vision.  
  
The door giving way; jackhammers against her ear  
  
They spill into the room.  _Jesus, what is this here?;_   _Guess this is where he aimed to put Michonne_.  
  
It was, and Andrea’s last comfort was that Philip hadn’t done that. Even if Rick was far enough gone to consider his offer, he wasn’t far enough gone to accept it. And Philip didn’t take the prison.  
  
But now people are here anyway. They haven’t brought the kids with them, but  _they’re_  still here, Michonne is here. Andrea’s turning, she can feel it, she’s going to kill her.  
  
She forces her mind clear. She can stay together long enough to pull the trigger.  
  
She knows these hands; she knows this voice. She knows about the safety.  
  
A stampede as they leave the room, the door closing like a tidal wave.  
  
Just her and Michonne now. Quieter and darker. Water in her mouth. Focus, she tells herself. Don’t make it worse. “Michonne, I’m so–”  
  
_“Don’t,”_  Michonne says. She’s crying. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry.”  
  
Andrea nods. She won’t let those words cross her lips.  _Her lips_. Behind them, infected saliva coats her teeth. Her teeth – _No_. “I wish I could kiss you goodbye.”  
  
“I wish I’d kissed you when I had the chance. So many times…”  
  
They could have, in the forest. Why didn’t they, again? Did they need each other too much? “I was afraid,” Andrea whispers. What was she afraid of?  
  
“So was I.”  
  
Michonne should be afraid now, Andrea thinks.  
  
She won’t be able to think anything for much longer.  
  
She wants water.  
  
Michonne whispers, “I don’t want to regret never saying I love you.”  
  
Andrea looks at the gun.  
  
“I know it,” says Michonne. “You don’t have to say anything.”  
  
“Will you – can you hold me?”  
  
“Yeah.” Michonne gives her more to drink, then slips her hand under Andrea’s shirt and rests it over her throbbing heart.  
  
Others people’s hearts felt to her like were skipping and fluttering as they died. Her own is heavy.  
  
“Your heart’s all wrong.”  
  
She’s dying.  
  
“It’s getting stronger, like…”  
  
Like what?  
  
It hurts to raise the gun. It’s heavy, it’s so heavy, and the metal is cold. Andrea is so hot she’s shaking with it, shivering, she’s thirsty, huddling in on herself against cold flame –  
  
Fingers against her forehead, and she wants to slap them away,  _I’ll bite you_ , but her arms only shake. “You’re not as hot.” Michonne’s voice. “Your fever’s going down.” She pushes Andrea’s collar aside, fingers to the wound, “Except here, here it’s still hot – ”  
  
It’s burning, it’s bursting, everything is red –  
  
She has to finish this. Her mind is clear in this second, and she  _won’t_  turn.  
  
Then there’s pain in her shoulder, something is wrenched from her hand, and she’s screaming.  
  
The door, footsteps, people coming into the room again. Not loud, just echoing. More hands on her face, more voices – _You slept through the outbreak, Rick, you don’t know what it was like_  –  _She’s right, I never seen a bite swell up hot like this_ –  _Was he alive when he bit you?_  
  
The words repeat. Someone’s talking to her. “Milton. Was he alive when he bit you?”  
  
Milton’s dead on the floor, pliers sticking out of his eye.  
  
There’s more shuffling, there’s milling around Milton’s body, and they’re poking at him, there are more voices:  _Ain’t nothing in his teeth._  Water in her mouth again. “Was it a walker that bit you?”  
  
It’s Rick who’s asking her, she thinks; a cop, trying to elicit information… whether she remembers the bite. Do walkers keep their names, she wonders? She doesn’t think they do. She remembers a name for whoever bit her, though; it’s at the edges of her mind… “Philip,” she says.  
  
Blood and flesh over her mouth now, a cut finger. Is it bait? The finger moves closer to her lips, under her nose, she can smell the blood and skin –  
  
It’s not her jaw moving of its own volition; it’s her stomach, wrenching. The blood and flesh are on offer, and she twists her head away, wants to scream for the pain in her shoulder, and then the blood scent is drowned in one that’s sharp and sour. Her hands and shirt are wet – has she bitten someone? She’s sick at that, and no, she realizes, it isn’t blood and gore, she’s vomiting, bringing up bile.  
  
“I’ll grab her some medicine and go find the Governor.” Michonne’s voice. Daryl’s: “I’ll go with Michonne. You get her home safe.”  
  
A squeeze of the hand. Michonne. “You get better for when I get back, you hear me?”  
  
She can’t speak, but she hears.  _Track my finger. Now that way. Okay, that’s real good. Can you walk on your own?_  
  
She tries. It doesn’t work.  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” says Rick. “Just lean up against me. I’m gonna move slow.”  
  
“Milton.”  
  
“He’s gone, Andrea.”  
  
“He's right there.”  
  
“Let’s get you in the car first.”  
  
It gets noisy as they go out. Milton gets left on the floor.  
  
Andrea made her own bed to die in.

 

     

 

No, not a bed. A boat…  
  
A mermaid, lying paralyzed in a rowboat.  
  
She’s desperate to get back into the warm water, but she doesn't know how to move back into it. A thick, sprawling parasol is blocking the sun. The boat’s motion makes her queasy, and she’s sick again as it slows down and then speeds up. Then drops of the water she hears splashing against the boat’s side hit her lips, and after them something dry – _crackers for your stomach, nice and easy_  – but they’re salty; she thinks it’s seawater. Are you supposed to drink salt water, here in this new world? Andrea always liked the ocean.  
  
Something bitter –  _just antibiotics, I know it tastes bad, you’ll be okay_ – and more of the water, fresh this time. She hears a drawbridge lifting.  _Carl! We're okay, you run and get Hershel –_  and the bridge lowers again. She feels the tow of the boat, hears more still water wash against it.  
  
The parasol is gone, and she’s not lying down anymore. Her fins – her feet? – are on land, on tile. The skin is almost red. “Scalded.”  
  
 “What?” she asks.  
  
“Andrea. Do you know where you are?”  
  
Where she is? She doesn’t recognize it. The voice is Rick’s, though. “With you.”  
  
“Yeah. We’re in the prison infirmary. You remember Carol?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“She’s behind you, keeping you steady.”  
  
“Hershel’s gotten me up to speed on first aid the last few months,” Carol says.  
  
“Hershel?”  
  
“He ought to be here, but he’s got his hands full with field surgery right now.”  
  
“I need water.”  
  
Rick presses a cup to her mouth, and Andrea drinks greedily, whimpering when it’s gone. “Do you remember where you were before this?” Rick asks, refilling the cup.  
  
A rowboat? No. “A car.”  
  
“And before that?”  
  
_Elicit information. Don’t lead._  Rick was a cop... “In a room. It was dark.”  
  
“That’s right. You’re beat up pretty bad.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Like Carol said, we need to be able to get Hershel up to speed once he can get here. That okay?”  
  
She nods, sending pain through her neck.  
  
There’s the sound of cloth being cut, and the jacket and shirt fall away from her body. She feels herself resting against Carol’s weight, feels the pressing of Rick’s callused hands. She sets her mind on the sound of the three of them breathing, of Rick’s voice: _Some of these burns look second-degree. Couple of cracked ribs, bruises look like there’s some blood vessels busted inside too_. _Not so bad you could get attempted murder to stick on just them, but they’re nasty._  
  
He’s wrong, Andrea thinks; the bruises are pretty. The exposed skin blooms red, blue-purple, weak green fading into yellow, and she should call Amy, who loves rainbows. She and Sophia liked to point them out to each other, when they lived in the quarry camp. Someone should bring them here; they’ll be disappointed if they miss one.  
  
But Sophia’s dead, she remembers. Carol’s here, but Sophia is gone. Still… “A rainbow,” she says aloud.  
  
“I’m sorry,” says Rick. Andrea winces at his hands on hips. An almost-black mass of bruises emerges when her jeans and underwear are gone. Rainbows need clouds to come from, Andrea supposes, and she laughs at how well it fits.  
  
Carol says, “I can guess what look’s on your face, Rick. This isn’t on you.”  
  
“I sent her back to the Governor, after I already left her to die back on the farm.”  
  
“You didn’t do all this.”  
  
“I put her right in his hands, Carol. I just let him take her away.”  
  
Carol turns on the shower then, and Andrea lets it drown out their words. She drinks from the spray, not caring about the sting of soap in wounds, and could fall to her knees in thanks when Carol hands her a cup again. She doesn’t mind later when cold metal is jabbed under her tongue. “It’s going down a little,” Carol says, “One-oh-two and a half.” She puts her fingers to Andrea’s wrists and then, a minute later, the cup to her mouth again. Andrea moans when it’s empty, and Carol smiles at her.  “Still thirsty?”  
  
Andrea nods.  
  
“You can have more in a minute.”  
  
Her throat is cracking. A minute is too long.  
  
“If you drink too fast, you’ll just throw up again, and then you’ll be even thirstier. I can count to sixty if you want.”  
  
Andrea shakes her head. Another mistake.  
  
“Your vitals are better, but they’re still weak. You need your rest.”  
  
But she doesn't need rest, she wants to say. She needs water.

 

    

 

There is water, eventually. “Not too fast,” someone says, and the voice is high and clear, familiar. Andrea knows it.  
  
She opens her eyes. There, offering her the water: looking a little different than Andrea remembered, but her sight is blurry… “Amy?”  
  
“No, I’m Beth.”  
  
“I thought you were gone.”  
  
A smile. “We thought you were gone too.”  
  
“I couldn’t see you in the boat.”  
  
“What boat?”  
  
“Amy, I’m so thirsty.”  
  
“I’m Beth. Carol went to get some sleep, but she said to take a little food with the antibiotic. You can have water too.”  
  
But she must be Amy. Andrea’s survived, after all. Amy must have. “My shoulder’s a mess,” she says.  
  
“It’ll get better.”  
  
“I don’t think I can cast and reel for a while. You’ll have to.”  
  
“Cast and reel?” asks Amy, in a voice, too, that’s a little different from what Andrea remembers. “You mean like fishing? I don’t really know any fishing.”  
  
“You do. You’ll remember what Dad taught us.”  
  
“No, I don’t know it. I’m Beth. Amy… she’s been gone for a while.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“She’s gone, Andrea. She just is. Here, have more water.”  
  
Her throat hurts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Image credits (LJ): poisonousicons, hewontgo, mediocrechick, poisonousicons.


	2. Infirmary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to gemjam for beta reading. All remaining errors are my own.

  
  
  
     

 

Andrea wakes up again to more light, a half-raised bed, and the smell of canned fruit. “Hey,” Rick says quietly. “Sorry to interrupt your sleep. You know what’s going on?”  
  
“Amy’s gone.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
If Andrea thinks about Amy now, she’ll fall apart. She tries to think of something else, anything else. She looks at everything in view and sees an ugly hospital ward.  
  
“The prison,” she tells Rick. “This is the prison infirmary.”  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
“Beth was here earlier. Hershel’s daughter.”  
  
“Yeah, that was Beth.”  
  
Why did Beth come there, again? Andrea was thirsty, and she’d had water, but… “To bring me medicine,” she says.  
  
Rick nods. “Hershel says have a little fruit and water every couple of hours too, keep your electrolytes up. He says start with just the water if you aren’t hungry.”  
  
Andrea wills herself to sip instead of gulp. “You brought me here… last night?”  
  
“Yeah. You remember anything else?”  
  
She thinks about it for a minute. “I remember what happened. Before I got here.”  
  
“Remembering’s a good sign.”  
  
He wants to ask more questions, Andrea thinks; he wants information. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, but in the end, he only puts a little white packet on her tray.  
  
She picks it up. Morning-after pills. “I’ve got that taken care of,” she says.  
  
“You sure?”  
  
Lori, Andrea remembers. He’s thinking of Lori. “I’m sure. My IUD has a longer life expectancy than probably I do.”  
  
Rick starts to say something and stops. He looks at his hands for a minute. “It’s not… I’m sorry, Andrea. I’m so fucking sorry.”  
  
“It’s okay.”  
  
“No, it isn’t.”  
  
“I’m better off now than I was yesterday.”  
  
“You are that.” He looks at his hands again. “I should probably let you rest up.”  
  
“Could you lock the door behind you?”  
  
“What for?”  
  
“In case I turn.”  
  
“You think you’re gonna up and die here?”  
  
“Probably not, but it would make me feel better… Please.”  
  
“All right, then. Let me lower the bed for you first.  
  
He does it moving carefully, making sure not to invade her space. Still a good cop, she thinks. But the good cop, the man who didn’t turn Michonne over and never would, is almost eclipsed by this new, hardened Rick who took a day to consider it. “Rick,” she says, “I know you’re doing a lot for me, asking people here to trust me.”  
  
“You made some bad calls there wasn’t much excuse for. The bad calls I made…”  
  
“I know you thought about handing over Michonne.”  
  
“The Governor told you that?”  
  
“Yes. But I never thought you’d go through with it.” She was right: he hadn't, and Philip was so angry…  
  
“You trust me, knowing I didn’t say no right off?”  
  
“I trusted myself well enough to know you’d never go that far,” Andrea says. “That doesn’t mean I trust you.”  
  
“You never trusted me all the way.”  
  
“I – ”  
  
“You’re a smart lady. Don’t start trusting me now.”  
  
Later, there’s more light, Carol’s voice, Mixed Fruit in Light Syrup. What will they do if they outlast the canned food?

 

     

  
A few mornings later, Andrea wakes to find a bunch of wildflowers on the makeshift bedside table, alongside bad oatmeal and worse orange juice that Daryl’s brought. “You got these for me?” she asks, trying not to think of white roses and Sophia Peletier.  
  
But Daryl shakes his head. “Michonne did. Guess you stayed asleep.”  
  
“Michonne? Is she here?”  
  
“No, we ain’t found the Governor yet. Got some of his muscle, though. Michonne picked up supplies and went back out.”  
  
“Oh.” Andrea wishes Michonne had at least left a note.  
  
But of courses she didn’t leave a note, Andrea tells herself. Michonne wouldn’t.  
  
Besides, what’s left to say?  
  
Daryl’s looking at her strangely. “What are these flowers?” she asks quickly. “I see them growing everywhere.”  
  
“Ain’t they in Florida?”  
  
“Not as far south as Miami.”  
  
“These here with three leaves is wake-robin. The rest is beard-tongue, mostly. Don’t know what day it is, but mostly there ain’t so many purple ones out same time as the white. We had an easy winter, though.”  
  
“Last winter was easy?”  
  
Daryl nods. “Miami girl like you best get ready for worse.”  
  
That isn’t something Andrea wants to think about. “Hand me those flowers?” she asks quickly. Daryl does, and Andrea separates out a clump of stems. “Here. For Merle’s…”  
  
“Merle? From you?”  
  
“We didn’t see eye to eye, but – ”  
  
“No, you looked at my brother a hundred times, and all you ever seen was a piece of poor white trash you best throw out by the side of the road.”  
  
Andrea looks at the flowers. “Yes, it was.”  
  
“But you might as well stick some flowers on Merle’s cross now you never have to see him again. You ain’t got nowhere to put ’em for your clean-scrubbed scientist friend.”  
  
“Milton deserves a goddamn monument.”  
  
“Or at least some flowers? You hated my brother.”  
  
“So did you.”  
  
Daryl looks at his feet, almost fast enough to hide the expression on his face.  
  
“I’m sparing a thought for Merle because of what he did for Michonne.”  
  
Daryl doesn’t look up. “Yeah, well. Stupid asshole wouldn’t’ve had to ’cept for what he did to her in the first place.”  
  
“I know that. Just put the flowers there.” When Daryl hesitates, she adds, “I’ll never get to give them to Amy.”  
  
“Son of a bitch don’t deserve ’em,” Daryl says, but he takes them anyway.  
  
Andrea wishes she could at least thank Michonne for the flowers.

  
  
    

  
By the time Andrea's down to sleeping fourteen hours a day, she's stopped expecting to wake up in Woodbury. At twelve, her disorientation at finding herself in the infirmary begins to fade, replaced by the return of pent-up energy. “I feel useless just lying here,” she protests to Hershel. “You’ve got more to do with the people you're taking in, and all I’m doing is eating your canned fruit.”  
  
“You’ve got as much right to it as anyone else. Truth be told, eating up the Diced Exotic Tropical Cocktail is doing us a favor.”  
  
“Hershel.”  
  
“I understand. You’ve got cabin fever. But you need to rest up. The cabin fever is a good sign.”  
  
“Just give me something to do,” she begs. “Filing the warden’s paper records, if you have to.”  
  
Hershel chuckles. “There’s bound to be something a little more productive. Did I hear you’re good with knots?”  
  
That’s how she winds up, a few days later, sitting in the warden’s office, sorting through fishing line that Glenn salvaged to patch the fences. Just until they find real fencing, he promised, but Andrea doesn’t know when that will be.  
  
“This will hold?” Michonne asks, carrying in a crate.  
  
“Some of it. What’s in there?”  
  
“The boxes at the top say ‘fly line.’”  
  
“That’s probably too rigid. Is there any nylon line?”  
  
Michonne rifles through the crate. “Yeah. Red packages.”  
  
“I think that’s our best option right now.”  
  
“Let’s hope Glenn finds more fencing soon.”  
  
“Let’s hope.”  
  
“Do you think this will work?” Michonne asks.  
  
“It’s better than leaving the fences unpatched.”  
  
“No, all of this. Crops, prison council …”  
  
“Trusting Rick?” asks Andrea.  
  
“I trust him. Enough, anyway.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because he betrayed me as much as he could anyone. That’s how you know people. How bad their worst is.”  
  
“I thought his worst was leaving me to die,” Andrea says. “Back at the farm. I would have done the same thing.”  
  
“He left a man to die on the roadside. There were reasons then too. Carl and I didn’t even try to stop him.”  
  
“How many times did you see a man by the roadside asking for help? Before all this, I mean.”  
  
“A lot of times.”  
  
“How often did you stop and give him a ride?”  
  
“Never. But things were different then,” says Michonne.  
  
“The stakes were lower. But that goes for the people in the car, too.”  
  
Michonne just looks thoughtful for a minute. “Maybe. But you still trust Rick less than me.”  
  
“I don’t trust myself completely either. Not after I trusted Philip.”  
  
“You haven’t forgiven yourself for that yet?”  
  
“People died because of it.”  
  
“The same people that man would have killed if your paths had never crossed.”  
  
“That isn’t an excuse for anything I did,” Andrea says.  
  
“I’m not saying it is.”  
  
“Then how can you trust me at all?  I showed you my worst. I betrayed you when I decided to stay there.”  
  
Michonne shakes her head. “No. You showed me your worst, that’s all.”  
  
“And you can forgive me… why, because I got roughed up afterwards?”  
  
_"No."_  Michonne bolts to her feet. "I need to go."

  
  
    

  
Patching the outer fence is a slow task. Andrea goes inch by inch from within it, starting with the section of “E” where Philip caught up to her. That must have been his plan from the start, Andrea thinks, to let her get as far as the prison and then… Well, if Hershel, who’s beside her to pick off whatever walkers straggle up, has pieced all that together, he’s mercifully silent about it.  
  
On the inward turns, they catch glimpses of activity within the inner fence, in the main yard: Ms. McLeod from Woodbury airing out salvaged clothes; Sasha and Tyreese sharpening logs; Carl helping Michonne with her horse. Andrea lingers a little on that sight.  
  
Hershel, whose own gaze is lingering on Ms. McLeod, catches her at it. “It’s time these old bones had a rest,” he says. “Sit with me on the inner fence?”  
  
She does, and they sit there for a few minutes, just watching people go about their day. Eventually Hershel says, “You really ought to try talking with Michonne again.”  
  
“I talk to Michonne.”  
  
“You know what I mean,” says Hershel, leaving Andrea feeling about six years old.  “You ought to talk, and you both know it. But neither one of you is saying a word.”  
  
“Did you have this conversation with her too?”  
  
“It fell short of a conversation.”  
  
“I don’t know where to start,” she admits.  
  
“Maybe with what you said inside that room together.” At Andrea’s raised eyebrows, he goes on, “Rick was outside to hear it. I don’t know the particulars, but I got the gist. You can’t tell me that either one of you wants it to wither away.”  
  
“No. But what we said in that room… What we had together. We were letting it go.”  
  
Hershel waits.  
  
“I don’t know what to say after good-bye.”  
  
“A piece of wisdom they don’t share in law school?” Hershel offers.  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
“Try saying the wrong thing. If you wait until you’ve figured out the right one, you’ll wind up angry at each other for not having thought of it already. That’ll leave you on a worse foot than starting with the wrong one.”  
  
Andrea fusses with the lid of her water bottle for a minute, as if getting it open required her undivided attention. “I’ve never been much good at relationships.”  
  
“I’d imagine you’ve made some mistakes, like all of us.”  
  
“You had a long, happy marriage.”  
  
“And a short, rocky marriage.”  
  
“It was happy in the end, wasn’t it?” Andrea asks.  
  
“It was,” he concedes.  
  
“And you’ve got daughters and a son-in-law who adore you.”  
  
He gives her a knowing glance. “I take it you wanted children?”  
  
“Yes. All through my twenties, I just figured I’d have them when I met the right person. I never even thought about what that person would be like. I just imagined the kids.” Bringing the only disorder she’d ever like into her life; being cooed over by their beloved Aunt Amy… “After I hit thirty… There were a few times I thought it was right on the horizon. I actually had an engagement fall apart the year before the outbreak. I was devastated. By a broken engagement, can you believe that?”  
  
“I would have been.”  
  
“And I’m just trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do now that everything’s different.”  
  
“Some advice from someone with experience in living happily for a long time after?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Start with the small things. They can pile up otherwise, and it’s all bound to be worse when you’re living in close quarters with so many other people who might chew too loudly or whatever else annoys you.”  
  
“Squeezing toothpaste the wrong way,” Andrea says. “That was always my thing.”  
  
Toothpaste, though, is something Andrea thinks she can handle at this point. There are a hundred other things she doesn’t. Monogamy, for one; Andrea likes to be flexible about it, but it’s hard to be flexible in quarters this cramped, for however long they stay here. And even before the outbreak, Andrea didn’t know how to be with a woman, not really. Sex was one thing; she’s been enjoying that since she was in college, has had a respectable number of female friends (or acquaintances, anyway) with benefits; a few flings; some impulsive one-offs. But for anything more involved than that, the best she can say is that she’s screwed up less than she has with men.  
  
And that’s only her half of the equation.  
  
“You’ll have to get it figured out once you move into the cellblock,” says Hershel. “We’re bound to need the infirmary for someone else soon enough, and Doctor S. thinks you were ready to leave before he turned up.”  
  
“Caleb is a dermatologist. And I still won’t move to the cellblock until you promise to lock me in at night.”  
  
“You still think you might die before you wake?”  
  
“Why risk it?  
  
“By that logic, we ought to lock everyone in.”  
  
“Maybe you should. Have Oscar refit the locks to work from the inside, if it makes people feel better.”  
  
“If I bring it to the council,” Hershel says, “will you move in with the rest of us?”  
  
“You’d do that? Do you even agree with me?”  
  
“No more than you agree with me that it’s good for Rick to lay down his gun and pick up a shovel.”  
  
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to farm.”  
  
“But you think Rick should be involved in the decisions about protecting us, not just feeding us.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Whereas I think he ought to be kept away from making any more decisions like he almost did about Michonne.”  
  
Andrea stares at him, startled.  
  
“It doesn’t trouble me any less than Carl getting too quick with the trigger. Rick will clear his head and get steady on the right track again, but he needs some time to do it. It’s the same way Beth needed to figure out on her own that this was a world she still wanted to live in.”  
  
“Hershel, I – ”  
  
Hershel puts up a hand to stop her. “She needed it,” he repeats, “the same as Rick needs it now.”  
  
Andrea takes a long breath. “You’ll really bring it to the council, locking the cells?”  
  
“Bring it and ask them to vote for it like I will.  _If_  you agree to move onto the block.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Then we have a deal,” Hershel says. “Though you and Michonne talking things out would make it sweeter.”  
  
“I’ll give it a try.”  
  
“What’s got you smiling?”  
  
“Nothing, it’s just… I’m a little surprised that you’re the one cheering us on.”  
  
“You expected an old Bible-thumper like me to give you grief?”  
  
“Not necessarily, but if it was going to be anybody, I’d have put my money on you.”  
  
“For a long time in my life, it would have been a sound bet,” Hershel admits. “You know it wasn’t the only thing I’ve understood wrongly.”  
  
“I know the feeling.”  
  
Hershel offers her a smile. “Now, I will give you counsel against placing bets.”  
  
Andrea laughs. “I’ll take that to heart.”  
  
“Good. You feel up to patching some more fence now?”  
  
“See that walker coming in from the left?”  
  
“I see it.”  
  
“I’ll have more line ready before it’s down.”

  
  
  
    

  
But Andrea and Michonne don’t talk about it, not exactly. There came a point in the woods, when they were alone together, when they no longer needed to speak. A significant look, a small gesture, a tilt of the head: it was all they needed. And she finds, when she tries to have a real talk with Michonne, that it still is.  
  
Andrea moves onto the cellblock the first day she can walk there shouldering the weight of a backpack holding two changes of clothes, a wash set, and a survival kit. That’s everything she owns.  
  
None of it was Amy’s.  
  
Michonne and Carl share a grin when Andrea turns up. “And is it to Madame’s liking?” Michonne asks, gesturing extravagantly.  
  
“Madame finds the accommodations most satisfactory.”  _It’s where Michonne lives, not where Amy doesn’t._  
  
“Perhaps her things should be set down?” Michonne says to Carl.  
  
“Are you sure you want to go out again right when Andrea’s moving in?” he asks, taking the backpack. “Daryl’s good at tracking by himself too.”  
  
“Two pairs of eyes looking are better than one, especially if the Governor’s holed up with other people,” Michonne says.  
  
“If he’s alive, he will be,” Andrea adds.  
  
“So we need the two bodies… Tell you what. I’ve still got a couple minutes before Daryl comes looking for me. I can show Andrea around the place if you get Flame saddled up for me.”  
  
“Sure thing,” says Carl, and his footsteps echo off down the hallway.  
  
Andrea sits down on the bunk, leaning over her hands in order to fit. “You asked me if I think all this will work,” she says. “Living here. You never told me what you think.”  
  
“It’s the best chance I see.”  
  
“If you thought the coast would give us a better one, would you go?”  
  
“No. It was a fantasy.”  
  
The lack of hesitation startles Andrea. She’d like to know how Michonne’s thinking came to change, but she can guess at too much of it to justify pressing. Instead, she settles for asking, “Why did you want to?”  
  
“My grandparents lived there.”  
  
_Which grandparents? The mainland or an island?_ Andrea tries to imagine a young Michonne, excited or bored – no, definitely excited – about visiting her grandparents when school was out, stepping onto the sand with a spring in her step. Was she one of those kids who had their adult face from early on, or would you never have been able to pick out her childhood picture ot of a group? She must have carried herself differently, Andrea thinks, and she must have spent time running around with other kids – a brother, probably; she has such an easy rapport with Carl, she must have had a brother. If they live long enough, Andrea will learn about him.  
  
“You really want us to share a cell?” Michonne asks. “We don’t have to. We’re opening up Block E.”  
  
“I really want us to. Would you rather we didn’t?”  
  
“No. It’s just…”  
  
“Don’t tell me it’s too fast. Not after all that time in the woods.”  
  
“It’s not. But…”  
  
Andrea waits.  
  
“I saw things, when I looked around Woodbury,” Michonne says. “But I didn’t tell you about them.”  
  
“I didn’t listen to what you did tell me.”  
  
“I never made excuses for you. Don’t make any for me.”  
  
“…Okay.”  
  
“I was sure he was killing people. But being quiet was so comfortable by then that I didn’t want to say why I was sure. I didn’t want to have to say anything. I just – I got mad at you at you for asking.” Some tears escape Michonne’s eyes, and she wipes them away angrily. “Because you chose a warm bed over somebody who left you behind with murderer instead of opening her damn mouth.”  
  
They sit there. Andrea doesn’t say anything.  
  
Eventually Michonne picks up her backpack. “I should go before Daryl starts getting pissy.”  
  
“I want to put the beds together.”  
  
“We can keep them bunked as long as you need.”  
  
“We’ve lost too much time already.”  
  
Michonne gives her a long look. “Arrange things however you like,” she says finally. “Just promise that I won’t come back to find my cat gone.”  
  
“The statue? Mich, I wouldn’t have put that thing in my freshman dorm ironically.”  
  
“There’s a story behind it.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Ask Carl. I’ll give you my version when I come home.”  
  
_If you come home._  “Make that soon, okay?”  
  
“I’ll do my damnedest.”  
  
“Kiss for luck?”  
  
“For luck,” Michonne agrees.  
  
But she lets Andrea turn a peck on the lips into a respectable kiss. When they pull apart, Andrea says, “I mean it. Don’t make me wait too long for the next one.”  
  
“I won’t.”  
  
And then Michonne is gone, leaving Andrea to contemplate the ugly concrete cell in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Images (LiveJournal): untappedtreasure (2), hewontgo, color_of_soul, fragilesummer.


	3. The Yard

  
       
   
The next few days are filled, above all else, with imagining circumstances that might keep Michonne from returning. Andrea barely sees the fence she’s patching, instead envisioning her horse shying away from a herd of walkers, the stray bullet of a careless hunter, contaminated water. Worst of all is the prospect of her finding Philip at an advantage. Andrea can’t think of what more he could inflict on Michonne than he did on her. She’s just certain that  _he_  could think of it.  
   
That’s what she repeats silently every time she catches herself wishing that Michonne hadn’t gone out. If Philip is alive, he’ll be coming for them.  
   
The council agrees with her on that in the meeting into which she’s pulled on a rainy day, a meeting that, it turns out, wasn’t about the Governor at all. “Just resources,” Sasha tells her.  
   
“Resources?”  
   
Carol nods. “Now that you’re walking around pretty well, do you think you could take some shifts in the guard tower? You’ve got a good eye.”  
   
“Of course.”  
   
“The other thing we’re hoping you can do for us, when you’ve healed up more – ”  
   
“I’m fine now.”  
   
“When Caleb and I agree that your ribs are done healing,” says Hershel, “we’re hoping that you can get us fishing enough to help feed all of us here. More than just some lucky catches in the stream like we’re getting now.”  
   
“More than that,” Andrea agrees. It was the only way she could usually fish last winter. It was enough to help two, when she could manage it. Too often, she couldn't manage it, and her stomach burned with hunger. Now they've got thirty people, and maybe more coming in. “We can’t get enough hunting?”  
   
“It isn't wise to rely on just that,” says Hershel. “Especially before Daryl can train Beth to help him. And we won’t have full-grown hogs until next year.”  
   
If they and the sow even make it that long, Andrea thinks. If they do…  “I might be able to get more fish,” she says. “There are some things I need, though.”  
   
“Tell us about that,” says Sasha.  
   
“I need to know what water’s around here,” Andrea says. Another lesson of the past winter. There’s nothing as easy to find as the ocean here, no road signs to good fishing lagoons. “The same way Daryl knows the woods. It’ll take time.” The west Georgia woods were the closest thing Daryl had to family, growing up; even the ocean wasn’t like that for Andrea. “I can start looking around now. For now I’ll need an escort, but…”  
   
“You can start looking around once Daryl or Michonne can escort you and your ribs are healed more,” Hershel says. “In the mean time, you can tell us what supplies you might need.”  
   
“Not the fly-fishing gear. There’s always a lot in stock, but it’s not as good for pond fishing. If it’s all you can find, it’s better than nothing, but…”  
   
“The outdoor-sports place had a lot of fishing stuff. Guns and ammo are gone, but…”  
   
“If most of the stock’s left, they should have what I need. If you can still make out the price tags, get simple-looking poles that are more expensive. And an inflatable raft. Look for one that comes with its own pump and kit.”  
   
Glenn and Hershel share a look. “Maybe you’d better come with us on a run,” Glenn concedes. “That store’s not far from the county library.”  
   
“The county library?”  
   
Sasha nods. “The building’s integrity isn’t going to last much longer. When it goes, mold’s going to eat up all the books. Area maps, do-it-yourself guides, that kind of thing.”  
   
“Any books you can find on medicinal plants,” Hershel adds. Andrea gets the sense he’s reminded them before. She wonders how desperate they are for medicine, or how many manuals the library bothered keeping in its collection after the internet displaced them... what, ten years ago? Maybe fifteen? She'd long since taken for granted, all of them probably had, that directions for repairing pipes and patching walls were a mouse click away. Now they're as distant as the satellites that used to connect them.  
   
“Something on the freshwater fish here wouldn’t hurt, if you can get it,” Andrea admits. She didn't recognize most of what she caught over the winter, only that they were very different from tripletail and bluefish she landed so easily in the south Biscayne Bay. She wonders if she’ll ever see the bay again. “I’ll need an escort when I fish, at least to start with. I can’t fight off walkers and hold my catch alone, not like Daryl.”  
   
“We don’t expect anyone to duplicate Daryl’s skills,” Hershel says. “You’ll learn, but it won’t happen overnight. We can spare someone in the meantime.”  
   
“I should train someone after that,” Andrea says. She knows she’s thinking too far ahead; it’ll be months, at least, before she can manage on her own, if the prison home or the people in it even last that long. She shouldn’t be thinking this way. But she  _is_  thinking this way, and it isn’t easy to stop. “Like you said, we don’t want to rely on just one person to be able to – to fish or… I’m sorry. You’re the council.”  
   
“But you’re right,” Carol says. “Once you’re more used to it, we should start thinking about who you can train.”  
   
“Someone patient.”  
  
“That’d be my brother,” says Sasha. “And he’d probably mind killing fish less than he minds killing something that looks closer to human.”  
   
“He’d be good at fishing,” Andrea admits, although Tyreese’s developing aversion to dealing with walkers is damaging Andrea’s respect for him as much as it is anyone’s. But if things go well, she’ll spend hours floating on the woodland ponds with burly, towering Tyreese, who’s less able than anyone to remind her of Amy.

 

       
   
In the mean time, though, the heat descends, pressing in on them like the herds of walkers that are drawn to the fence. Maybe it’s the smell of sweat in humid air that draws them. Last summer they had access to enough siphoned gas to keep the RV’s running, and the pond at the quarry. Now the RV is gone, and Dale is gone with it. And by the time tempers start blooming to match the heat rash, Andrea can’t even hate herself for missing the A/C more.  
   
Hershel and Caleb come to blows about hog-borne diseases, and Sasha stops speaking to Tyreese over his aversion to fence duty. When Judith starts teething, the cellblock turns into an echoing oven of crying, her shrill screams eating away at the rest of their compassion hour by hour.  
   
Andrea stays as calm as she can, stopping herself short of punching the bathroom wall over the way Carol squeezes toothpaste – there’s the wrong way, and then there’s something so egregious it transcends the category of  _wrong_ , which is how Carol squeezes it. She reminds herself during mealtimes that Hershel’s chewing is a better sound than the groans of walkers.

Then, of course, somebody has to go and leave a goddamn Lego where she’ll step on it getting out of bed. A  _Lego_ , of all the useless things. They  _hurt_  when you step on them, mother _fucker_ , she’s going to  _kill_  whoever was that  _fucking stupid_  –  
   
“Um, sorry about that,” says a gawky boy who comes to see about the commotion _._  “Mika said she’d clean up last night, and she mostly did, but she’s seven, and I should’ve checked. Is your foot okay?”  
   
Andrea’s tempted to say that no, her goddamn foot is not okay, but something in the kid’s manner makes her anger deflate. “It’s fine,” Andrea says, taking a deep breath. “How did a Lego wind up here?”  
   
“They kind of get everywhere. I’m sorry.”  
   
“I’ve had worse… You’re Patrick, right?”  
   
“Right. And you’re…”  
   
“Andrea. Do you have lessons today, Patrick?”  
   
“Not until after lunch.”  
   
The dark cinderblock library where Carol holds lessons sounds like an appealing place to spend the hottest hours, and Andrea briefly considers pretending she’s forgotten long division. Instead, she says, “Well, before lunch, you can help me patch the fence.”  
   
“The outer fence?”  
   
“No, the inner one. Is that a relief or a disappointment?”  
   
“Both, kind of. Are you done with the outer one?”  
   
“Only the critical areas. But we need to get started on those on the inner ones.”  
   
“Are you going to teach me to tie knots?”  
   
“No,” says Andrea, “I’m going to teach you how to hold a box for me.”  
   
But she winds up teaching him knots anyway, just by the fact of his watching as she worked. She has to explain the difference between nylon line and fly line, showing him how to start an Albright knot and where to use a Slim Beauty instead. “Where did you learn all this, Girl Scouts?” Patrick asks.  
   
“No, my dad. He dragged me on fishing trips pretty much every weekend of my childhood.”  
   
“That was his hobby?”  
   
“It was more of an obsession than a hobby. After I went off to college, I never went fishing again.”  
   
“Until – ”  
   
“Until later,” Andrea says. To fill the silence, she goes on, “After college, I went into law.”  
   
“Really? My da… My, um, my daydream, before, was to be an astronaut.”  
   
“That’s a big daydream.”  
   
“I know. It’s really hard to be an astronaut. I was actually going to summer camp for it.”  
   
“The NASA place at Cape Canaveral?”  
   
“That’s the one. I even made it as far as Atlanta-Hartsfield Airport.”  
   
“You were connecting through to Orlando?”  
   
“No, it was supposed to be a direct flight. But the planes got grounded.”  
   
“I remember when that happened,” Andrea says. She watched it on the news in her hotel room outside Chattanooga, Amy’s excitement about Lookout Mountain forgotten as they heard  _borders sealed for the first time since 9/11 and only the second in U.S. history_ ;  _CDC has now confirmed over twenty-five thousand deaths in the United States, more than occurred in the first five years of the AIDS epidemic; we warn viewers that these graphic images may be disturbing to some…_  
   
Patrick says, “It was mostly a daydream anyway. I figured if I didn’t get to be an astronaut, I wanted to be an engineer.”  
   
“Maybe you’ll still get to be one. If this epidemic gets sorted out, we’ll need all the engineers we can get.”  
   
“Do you think it ever will? Get sorted out, I mean?”  
   
“I don’t know that it won’t.”  
   
“That’s something, I guess.”  
   
“Just be careful not to end up a workaholic like I was. Have a hobby.”  
   
“My hobby’s dinosaurs.”  
   
Andrea forces a smile on her face, keeps her voice steady.  _First-year Mock Trial, you can do this._  “Yeah? Which one’s your favourite?”  
   
   
       
   
By the time Michonne and Daryl return, the heat is starting to become less a shock and more of a fact of life. It’s plain, though, that they’ve been suffering in it as much as anyone back at the prison. They ride back up to the gates, urging their horses fast against the failing daylight, with their shoulders slumped and their faces grim.  
   
Andrea knows before anyone’s said a word that the search was a disappointment: No Philip, no sign of Philip, nothing closer to Philip than the last of his loyalists, walking in the woods. “Slippery son of a bitch,” Daryl spits, handing his horse off to Carl.  
   
“We’ll keep looking,” Michonne says, but there’s less fire in her voice than there was the last time they came back empty-handed. “If he’s alive, he’ll be angling to come after us. Especially if he gets people on his side again.”  
   
“He will,” says Andrea.  
   
“Like she said, we’ll keep looking. You gonna be healed up enough to help us with the next time out?”  
   
“Depends on the time frame. I’m supposed to give it another two or three weeks’ rest.”  
   
“Two or three?” Michonne asks.  
   
“Caleb thinks four to six,” Andrea admits.  
   
“Maybe we’ll get lucky before then,” says Michonne.  
   
“If you do, bring me his head.”  
   
“Will if I can,” Daryl agrees, sounding sullen as he retreats into the dusk.  
   
A tepid shower seems to raise Michonne’s spirits, or at least makes her smell less like horse sweat when she slides under the sheet. “My cat’s still here,” she says, sounding pleased as she squints into the dimness of the cell.  
   
“I made my peace with the damn thing… Come on, move over here so I can give you a kiss.”  
   
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”  
   
“I’m fine. You don’t have to badger me about being okay.”  
   
“And if you’re sure, I won’t.”  
   
“I’m sure.” She gives Michonne the promised kiss and lets it turn into a make-out session, which is one of those rare things that haven’t been completely lost now. It’s  _nice_ , Andrea realizes; it’s the first thing she’s had just feel nice since the world ended. “You like that?” she asks.  
   
“I do like it,” says Michonne, her voice holding a note of amusement that Andrea wishes she could bottle.  
   
Andrea runs her hands over Michonne’s sides like she did in the woods. She’s pleased to feel residual sweat instead of the gooseflesh her fingers found all through that miserable winter, when they told each other, when they kept on telling themselves, that they were just doing it to keep warm. “When we were in the woods,” she whispers, “I was so afraid of pushing you away.”  
   
“I was afraid of a lot of things,” Michonne says.  
   
“You still are.”  
   
“I’m done being afraid of this.”  
   
“Me too.” She circles her fingertips over Michonne’s clavicles in a way that, five months ago, she couldn’t have justified. “Mind if I get a little handsy?”  
   
“Go right ahead.”  
   
Andrea has no intention of having it turn into sex, she truly doesn’t. It just sort of does anyway, once they’re both getting the kind of touch they craved for so long. Michonne keeps pressing herself into the contact and giving these little gasps that sound like suppressed moans. And Andrea, who only meant to enjoy their not denying themselves the full measure of the intimacy, pretty soon finds herself pressed front to back against Michonne as hard as her still-mending ribs will allow and pawing her with all the finesse of varsity quarterback. She’s got one hand on Michonne’s perfect breasts and the other between her perfect thighs as she kisses and nuzzles and sucks her way up and down Michonne’s perfect neck. Andrea, whose sex drive is still only at about forty percent strength, feels the thrum of a warm, undemanding arousal as Michonne pushes into her touch, trembling.  
   
She rests her head on Michonne’s shoulder. “I’m here,” she whispers. She’s never been much for talking during sex, but it seems important, somehow, to say that. She flicks the tip of her tongue against Michonne’s earlobe and gives it a tugging little nip. “We’re both here.”  
   
“Yeah,” whispers Michonne, “here,” and then with no warning she stiffens up and comes, quietly but unmistakably, against Andrea’s hand.  
   
“I’m here,” Michonne repeats a minute later, still breathing hard, turning back to face Andrea. “You with me?”  
   
“I’m with you.” Andrea laces their hands together and licks her own fingers deliberately. She’s always liked the taste.  
   
When she’s done, Michonne draws her in for a kiss and runs a hand over Andrea’s hair. “You’re so beautiful,” she says quietly, and kisses Andrea again. “I can’t wait to get my hands on you like that. As soon as you’re ready.”  
   
“I’ll let you know,” Andrea promises. She works herself around to being the big spoon, the way Michonne always liked her to. “Do you still want me to let you sleep through…”  
   
“Leave me asleep no matter how bad the dream gets. Unless I start making noise.”  
   
“You never do.”  
   
“Do you still want me to wake you up?”  
   
“Please,” Andrea says. “Even if it’s quiet.” In the first months after Amy was gone, Andrea’s dreams were only discomfiting, with Amy seeming to be alive still. It took a while for those final hours together to start replaying themselves, night after night, in Andrea’s sleeping mind. Milton’s crept into the edges of those dreams lately, trying to help them.  
   
Maybe they’ll both be in her dreams tonight, sitting down to breakfast in the sunshine. Amy will be teasing her sister about finally getting lucky, and Milton will look down at his plate blushing, maybe not picking up every nuance of the teasing, but liking the good-naturedness behind it.  
   
Maybe Andrea can just not fall asleep.  
   
       
   
Too soon, Michonne is gone again, hunting down Philip, and Andrea has more to miss. There’s an absence in the bed when she lies down at night and wakes up during it, and a hand that’s not there to hold at the table. She’s aware, constantly, of the fact that every day they haven’t found Philip is a day he’s gaining strength, and that after a certain point, it might not be an advantage for them to find him first. And they have no idea when that point will be reached.  
   
She takes Patrick under her wing –as a distraction, she tells herself, and because the poor kid needs somebody to do it. Andrea may not be the best person for him, not by a long shot, but if nothing else, she’s a Miamian and can help him dust off his schoolroom Spanish while he helps her patch the inner fence. He’s got the worst gringo accent Andrea’s heard in a long time, but they can work on that, and they do work on it as Patrick moves from haltingly describing the weather to talking about catching frogs in the retention pond with Carl. They just let the frogs go, he hastens to explain – or would, if “let go” didn’t stymie him – but Andrea supposes it’s a good pastime. Better to learn how to catch frogs before you need them for food than after.  
   
She wishes she could have Patrick’s company when she’s on watch. At fourteen, he’s probably old enough to start training as a second, but his eyesight’s terrible (and someone, probably Daryl, should get him to practice navigating without his glasses; it would be so easy for Patrick to get stuck without them). But maybe that wouldn’t be a problem, Andrea muses during another stretch of watching nothing happen. Relief watch is maybe ten percent of the second’s duty. The rest is keeping the primary awake, and that isn’t even necessary when there’s anything going on in the yard to break the monotony of the view. More than once, Andrea catches Lizzie trying to sneak up close to the fence – to feed the walkers live rats, it materializes; she doesn’t envy Carol, having that conversation. The other kids are more interested in sneaking off to admire the piglets, which Andrea, unlike Rick, doesn’t begrudge them. By the time they’re full-grown hogs, she’s sure, people will be more hungry than sentimental. In the mean time, they might as well enjoy the fact that the piglets are cute.  
   
Hell, sometimes the piglets are a distraction from whatever conversation the second can provide. Bob Stukey has enough tall tales from his days as an Army medic to keep Andrea entertained, but Carol’s voice is soothing enough that you can nod off to it. And Tyreese’s idea of enlivening conversation is to sigh and sorrow over the state of the world. Just to keep her temper, Andrea takes to silent games of Would You Rather Hear: Hershel chewing or Tyreese sighing? Rick sharing too much information about fertilizer, or Caleb about gangrene? Her sixteen-year-old self, whining about being dragged out fishing by a father who  _didn’t understand_ , or her thirty-six-year-old self, pleading on his voice mail to call her back, that she and Amy were safe but for God’s sake, please, just call her.    
   
The main perk of watch duty is seeing people come back safely: Glenn or Oscar from leading a run, or Maggie and Rick carrying satchels of edible plants. Best of all is seeing Michonne and Daryl return – empty-handed again and looking even more discouraged, as Andrea discovers when she focuses the binoculars on them, but they’re alive and whole.  
   
“Maybe we ought to let it go,” Daryl says, when Andrea goes to meet them. “One of the walkers swarmed Woodbury probably ate him, else he’d’ve turned up here by now.”  
   
“It’s too much of a risk,” says Michonne. “He’ll come back if we let him, and he’ll bring friends.”  
   
“I’ll go with you next time. That way Daryl can stay here and hunt.”  
   
Daryl snorts. “Hunting’s no good in summer. Even worse when the herds come through scare everything off. ’Sides, you can’t tell the ass end of a horse from the front.”  
   
“I can drive.”  
   
“Would he risk getting caught out on the road?” Michonne asks.  
   
Andrea thinks it over for a minute. “If he had enough of an advantage. A tank, maybe, or a big convoy.”  
   
“Car’s no more help than a horse if he does,” Daryl says.  
   
He’s right; it isn’t. But Philip’s still out there, alive until proven otherwise, and Andrea isn’t doing anything to help track him down.  
   
“You’re helping,” Michonne says, when Andrea brings it up. “We need somebody on watch if he comes to us.”  
   
“Rick was on watch the last time he came here.”  
   
“You’re a better lookout than he is.”  
   
“I try.” And, because her mind is going to when Philip caught up with her, under Rick’s nose, because she doesn’t want to think about it, Andrea smiles.

 

       
   
Watch duty is a little more tolerable with Michonne back, at least. When Andrea scans inside the fence, she can watch Michonne exercising Flame, cutting a damn fine figure on that horse. She doesn’t even try to keep herself from getting sentimental about the horses; hell, even Rick doesn’t try to stop Carl. Seeing them is a reminder of Michonne and Daryl’s presence, of their safety. Andrea treasures the little glimpses she gets of Michonne teaching Carl how to care for the horses, both of them smiling as Flame nuzzles Carl’s hand for whatever he’s secreted away from the garden.  
   
And they make each other smile, Carl and Michonne. She uses the breaks on her fence shifts to stop by the garden or the pigpen and chat with him. On the cellblock, they pore over comic books together, both gesticulating animatedly as they compare different iterations of Spider-Man or debate the merits of  _Runaways_. Michonne’s good, though, about respecting Carl’s time with his sister, something that too many people, Andrea included, are tempted to encroach. She lets him walk Judith around the yard without offering unnecessary help or unwanted company. When it’s Rick’s turn to wash dishes, Michonne doesn’t offer to hold the baby while he does it, just takes over his turn without saying anything. She’s giving them space to be a family, Andrea thinks.  
   
Then she thinks more.  
   
How can she have been so stupid, so wrapped up in her own pain, that it took her this long?  
   
She finds Michonne in the evening, sitting by the tomato vines. Michonne doesn’t even look to see who’s coming. “You’ve been thinking about something today,” she says. Andrea can barely hear her. “Wondering something. The way you keep looking at me and then looking away.”  
   
“I wasn’t going to bring it up.”  
   
Michonne shakes her head and starts to say something, then stops.  
   
“Michonne, it’s okay. I’m used to wondering.”  
   
“I don’t want you to be.”  
   
Another silence.  
   
Wind rustles through the grasses.  
   
Andrea swallows heavily. “A son?”  
   
“Yes,” whispers Michonne. “Three years old.”  
   
“I’m sorry.”  
   
“Three and a half, almost. I think only ‘almost.’ We lost track of the days before…”  
   
It cuts Andrea to the bone that Amy died on her own birthday. She's cried to Michonne about it.

She closes her eyes and breathes.  
   
“What was his name?”  
   
“Please don’t ask me that.”  
   
“Okay.”  
   
Neither one of them moves.  
   
“Do you want to be alone?” Andrea asks.  
   
“Yes. But…”  
   
“But?”  
   
“I don’t think I should be.”  
   
“Okay.” Andrea sits down beside her and an inch further back, not quite touching.  
   
They stay there, not speaking, until the mosquitos begin to swarm in the fading light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Image credits (LJ): witchbred, fandom-obsessed, girlmonday, hewontgo, untappdtreasure.


	4. Atlanta

  
  

Every moment Andrea spends on watch duty in the next few days, she spends imagining things. It’s easy, it’s so easy, to envision Michonne as a mother, and Andrea’s more aware of those visions than she is of anything in her binoculars’ field of vision. Her mind conjures up perfect video clips of Michonne making clean-up time into a game, coaxing her son to try vegetables, improvising new ways to sing out the alphabet. She’s sure, before she even knew she was thinking of it, that Michonne wanted her son to be someone’s older brother. She would have guided her kids through sibling rivalry and gotten to watch them becoming friends. Maybe she was trying for it when the outbreak hit. Hell, maybe she was pregnant; there were a lot of miscarriages then, when more people were around to have them.  
  
She envisions Michonne’s son, too, of course, her mind scrambling to fill in the unknown. She can conjure up a thousand different pictures of him, each one far more unreliable than Andrea’s memory of the last picture she took of Amy, the picture that’s now shards of silicone in the mud of Hershel’s farm. Did the little boy look like Michonne or like his father, or was he one of those kids who always got relatives debating the resemblance? Or maybe he was one of those children who looked so little like either parent that he could’ve been switched at birth?  
  
Andrea can’t go on like this, letting visions of Michonne’s son fill every corner of her mind.  
  
She makes herself focus, when watch is done, on what Glenn brought her from his most recent run: A battered 1996 edition of  _Freshwater Fishes of Georgia_ , the call-number label peeling off its spine, and a map of Coweta County so worn out that Andrea’s afraid to fold it. If either one gets lost, they can’t replace it, any more than they can easily replace equipment if Andrea underestimates what she’s fishing and winds up capsized. Oscar almost died getting the raft and poles.  
  
So she learns about the difference between striped bass and hybrid bass, and which of the biggest species are easy to overfish. She wonders if she could overfish them. Are the populations rebounding, without anyone left to pollute the water, let alone fish it? Or will the lakes be choked with rotting corpses, with no fish in them that are safe to eat?  
  
If Michonne’s son was three, he would have hated fish, but maybe now, after two years in this world, he would tolerate it.  
  
She has to stop this. She won’t be able to hide her fixation from Michonne for long, and she wouldn’t want to hide it. But it’s so hard for Michonne to talk about these things, and Andrea isn’t going to cross-examine her, isn’t going to push. She can do some wondering.  
  
She told herself that in the woods, though. She left Michonne walled in to her own silence – eventually, after she started with questions that were too big ( _How did you come to be this? Who were you before?_ ) and devolved into pelting her with trivial ones ( _What car did you drive? What’s your favorite color?_ ) in the hopes of getting any information at all.  
  
She has to start somewhere.  
  
“Is your favorite color orange or purple?” They’re hanging clothes to dry. What she wants to know is whether Michonne had grown up hearing  _Time is purple just before night, when most people turn on the light_ , and whether she read that poem to her own son, the one whose name Andrea can’t ask.  
  
“I never could settle on a favorite. Did you always like blue?”  
  
“Pretty much.”  
  
Or again, “Did you have your own horse?” because if Andrea can’t find out whether Michonne had to keep her son from bothering the cat or if he was afraid of it, or if he was allergic to cats and they didn’t have one, she can at least learn that no, Michonne never had a horse, just riding lessons. She’s a good enough rider that she must have started when she was just a kid. Maybe no older than her son would be now. She’d be teaching him.  
  
Andrea doesn't think, when Michonne kicks in her sleep, about whether her feet had gotten tender at the end of pregnancy, or about putting her hand onto a bowed-out belly and feeling a fetus kick. She  _doesn't_.  
  
  
      
  
Michonne’s eager to go out searching again, and Andrea doesn’t blame her. Daryl’s enthusiasm is flagging, but Philip’s still out there, and while he is… Andrea’s being so careful not to press Michonne, but she can’t stop herself from wondering about the nameless little boy. He  _wasn’t_  nameless, though. It feels like Rumplestiltskin inside Andrea's brain:  _Jacob? Christopher? Daniel? Martin?_  And Michonne can see that she’s wondering.  
  
So she persuades Daryl to go out and leaves Andrea to wonder on her own. Did Michonne’s son say  _ma-ma_  first and  _da-da_  second, or vice versa? Did he cling to his parents and hide from new people, or was he gregarious like Mika, going up to strangers to make them into friends? Would he understand by now, as Lizzie still doesn’t, what walkers are? Would he still remember what the sky used to look like, when light pollution blocked out the night? Patrick talks about galaxy formation with no less enthusiasm than he does Legos, and dammit, Andrea thinks, if the world ever gets back in order, the kid has  _earned_  being an astronaut. Would he be teaching Michonne’s son the constellations even in this world, if the boy were alive? He would be almost five, Andrea calculates; too young to think about orbital gravity, but old enough to play connect-the-dots with the stars.  
  
She has to distract herself.  
  
She cajoles Caleb into clearing her for light reconnaissance in the woods, and with Rick’s help finds a few spots that should be good for fishing. Not quite yet, Caleb’s made her promise; if she strains her ribs too early… She talks her way onto an easy run, standing guard on the deteriorating roof of a bank while Glenn and Sasha carry out stack after stack of fifties to use as insulation. Money’s fire-resistant, Sasha explains. It’s still good for something.  
  
Another time, Andrea helps sift through a department store’s mostly intact wares, bursting from hangers under still-legible signs advertising discounts and new collections. It’s surreal to weed out fashion boots and dress jeans from ones they can actually use. Rotting perfume cloys the air, rats squeak just out of sight, and Andrea tries to look away from the jewelry counter, tries not to think of mermaids.  
  
She’s still trying not to think of mermaids in the evening, when she’s stuck with Tyreese as her watch partner. What else can she think of? Ways to push Tyreese out of the tower if he launches into one more goddamned philosophical aside? Whether his sighing is actually more annoying than Glenn and Maggie’s squeaky mattress? It is, Andrea decides; she’d rather spend the next ten shifts listening to them go at it than…  
  
She breaks that train of thought when a cloud of dust appears in her sights. It’s just before dusk, so she has to focus on it, but yes, that’s what it is. She squints through her binoculars and makes out a horse – no, two horses. The lead one is familiar: Brownie, carrying Daryl. And just behind Brownie is Flame –  
  
Flame doesn’t have a rider.  
  
Andrea looks through her binoculars again. Brownie with Daryl, then Flame.  
  
This isn’t real.  
  
Only this is real.  
  
Andrea tries to take a deep breath. Tries.  
  
“You okay?” asks Tyreese.  
  
She hands him the binoculars. “Here. Take over.”  
  
“You see something?”  
  
Tries again.  _Breathe_. “That,” she says, “is what I gave you the fucking scope for.”  
  
She’s holding back dry sobs as she runs down the path, not caring if she falls to pieces in sight of the world. Patrick grabs her arm and guides her onto the grass as the hoofbeats approach and the gates groan open. When the horses have stopped, Patrick lets go of her arm, and Andrea starts running –  _Don’t run towards them, they’ll spook_  – makes herself walk, blinking back tears to make out Flame –  
  
Other hands on her arms – Daryl’s hands, it’s Daryl. “Settle down. It’s all right.”  
  
“Michonne?”  
  
“She’s up by Atlanta. We found some people.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“She’s stayin’ with ’em while I come back for a truck. Ain’t none there got batteries still work.”  
  
“I want to go back with you.”  
  
“You cleared to travel?”  
  
“I can drive.”  
  
“But you ain’t supposed to.”  
  
“I need to see Michonne.”  
  
“You’ll see her. She sent you a present.  
  
Andrea stares, uncomprehending, as Daryl detaches one of Flame’s burgeoning saddlebags. “Careful unwrapping it,” he says.  
  
Andrea pulls something heavy and swaddled out of the saddlebag and rolls off the first piece of cloth. What’s inside, she realizes, is a human head.  
  
It’s Phillip’s, severed clean in a stroke. The teeth are gnashing.  
  
“You said bring you that,” says Daryl, as if she’d asked a question. “Didn’t know how much you meant it.”  
  
All Andrea means to do now is see Michonne, touch her, be sure that she’s alive. “You can do the honors if I can drive tomorrow.”  
  
Daryl looks at the head, then at her. “We’ll need two cars if Glenn and Oscar come to get stuff from the apartments,” he says. “You let me end him, you can drive one.”  
  
“Deal.”  
  
“One more thing.”  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
“You best never take watch when I’m out again.”  
  
“I promise.”  
  
They shake hands, and Daryl drives a bolt through Philip's brain.  
  
  
    
  
Michonne is all Andrea can think of on the drive to the outskirts of Atlanta. She’s barely aware of Glenn navigating for her, or of how little sign of human life they see along the way, where a year ago there might have been hints. Back then, she supposes, Glenn might have reminisced about delivery routes then, maybe try to find something funny to say. But all Andrea can think is that Michonne is still alive, or was a couple of days ago, among the hundreds of neighbors who are lurking in bathtubs or groaning in their beds, in their cribs.  
  
The people Michonne is with trusted Philip. She can’t run to Michonne and embrace her, ribs be damned, can’t run her hands all over Michonne and feel that she’s alive. Not in front of them.  
  
When they get to the apartment, one of the women there is close to crying. Her daughter is in tears.  
  
“I know it’s hard, Lily,” says a younger woman. “I believed him too. Maybe we were right to. But she’s right that we should have asked more questions.”  
  
“You look at everything like a cop. It makes you imagine things,” says Lily.  
  
“Michonne’s had plenty of chances to hurt us.”  
  
“So did Brian. And she threw him to the biters, after she  _cut off his head_  – ”  
  
“I should have cut off his  _dick_.”  
  
Glenn looks ready to agree, but he clenches his jaw. “Let’s just get this handled, all right? Oscar and I can start with the upper floors if Michonne helps Tara bring her dad down to the cars.”  
  
They go, and Andrea’s left alone in the kitchen with Lily, who sends her daughter to check the bedrooms one last time for anything they might have forgotten. Lily stares at her. “It was you, wasn’t it?” she asks, after a long minute. “You asked for Brian’s head.”  
  
“He told me his name was Philip.”  
  
“Why did you do it?”  
  
Andrea doesn’t answer.  
  
“Can you even tell me?”  
  
“You fell in love with him too, didn’t you?”  
  
“Please just answer the question.”  
  
“Michonne must have told you what he really was. She tried to warn me too, when Philip started charming me. I didn’t want to believe it.”  
  
“I can’t believe anything that woman tells me.”  
  
“Her name’s Michonne.”  
  
“And I don’t want Meagan near her.”  
  
Andrea is suddenly furious. “If you still don’t believe what Michonne told you, I’ll show you.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Come into the bathroom.” When Lily doesn’t follow immediately, Andrea pulls her in. “I’ll show you what I learned about him.”  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
“This,” says Andrea, and she pulls off her shirt. The scars are done forming, Caleb says, but they haven't started fading, and they still stand out on her skin, violent and red. Andrea unhooks her bra next, after half a second’s hesitation. “I fell out of love and I tried to get away. He brought me to a concrete basement with aluminum siding.” She toes off her boots. “Not the most comfortable place to have sex. I asked him not to, but I’d said yes before, so it didn’t matter.”  
  
Deep breath; jeans and underwear. “He got dressed again afterwards. Except for his belt.” Half-turn. “There aren’t many mirrors at the prison. I can’t see most of what I got.” Lily sucks in a breath. “He put it back on afterwards. He said it was a present from his dead wife.” It was a nice belt, Brooks brothers. Andrea sees it in her dreams. “He never left me alone there for too long. He always wore it – ” She chokes on the words, on the memory.  _They’re just words. Don’t be weak._ “He’d come in, and he’d tie the belt over the duct tape.” She brings her wrists up close to Lily’s face, shows her the mark from the buckle. “And then he would fuck me.”  
  
“Please stop.”  
  
“He’d always do something else too. Usually after. Here. On my hip. Electrical burn." She points, then moves a hand over herself. "Glass bottle. He should've used a razor blade, but there weren't enough. He told me.  Once, he had me kneel on the bathroom floor. Tiled concrete. For a minute, I actually thought he’d have me get him ready to fuck me again.”  
  
“You don't have to...”  
  
Andrea laughs. “I know; it was absurd! I was so stupid... I didn’t even know a shower could run that hot.”  
  
“Those scalds need – ”  
  
“We don’t have what we need anymore.” She laughs again. “There was a researcher there who was trying to figure all this out, medically. Milton. He didn’t have any of the equipment he needed, but he was  _trying_. Philip showed Milton hints of what he really was, just like he did everyone. Everyone had their own reason for not picking up on them. I didn’t want to. Milton had autism.”  _Milton deserves a goddamn monument._  “One day he brought Milton in. He stabbed him so he’d eat me alive. It took him three hours to die.”  
  
Lily just stands there.  
  
“And when Philip saw I’d put him down – ” Andrea touches the scar on her neck. “ – he did this and left me there to find, so that it would look like a walker bite and my  _friends_  would kill me!” And she had been delirious enough to spare them the trouble. “Don’t tell me you don’t believe what Michonne says. She’s the one who made sure that that man will never,  _ever_ come near your family again.”  
  
They stare at each other.  
  
“Mommy?” comes the girl’s voice from outside the door.  
  
“Get dressed!” Lily hisses. “What is it, Meagan?”  
  
“I’m done checking my room. Is everything okay?”  
  
“Everything’s fine. I’m just helping Andrea with something.”  
  
“The pizza guy says it’s time to go.”  
  
“We’re coming.” To Andrea she whispers, “Are you okay?”  
  
Andrea forces herself to look up from lacing her boots. “I’m fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Image credits (LJ): accios, icequeen3101, poisonousicons.


	5. Pond

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Walking Dead" is all Kirkman's/AMC's. No claim or commerce here.

 

And Andrea is fine. Her ribs keep mend and she’s cleared for fence duty and then to go out, although, per the council, she can never take the same ones as Michonne. Couples, they’ve declared, are better off fighting to get back to each other than deciding to face death side by side. Glenn and Maggie are presumably okay with it, and Michonne is too. Michonne, who can barely talk about her own child (Jonathan? Kevin? William? No, William doesn’t seem right . . .)  Andrea tries to be okay with it too.

 

And it is okay, really, to have it be Daryl helping her get a good pond cleared. It’s fine to be with Glenn when they run across, miraculously, one of the Morales girls, surviving day-to-day with some people who used to be migrant workers. Andrea tries to let that make up, in her mind, for a supply run that yields nothing in the way of useful fencing, or the young couple Andrea and Bob can’t persuade to come back with them. Andrea’s on fence duty when they walk up to the gate, so fresh that Andrea thinks for a second, in the fading light, that they’ve changed their minds and come to the prison after all.

 

That’s one bad day among others as the summer wears on. Sometimes the herds swell and press on the fences. The fence squeals and bends under the pressure, and the forest with its plants and fish might as well be on the moon.

 

So they take more fence shifts, all except Tyreese. Daryl trains Beth to help him catch the snakes that slither into the yard to escape being trampled by thousands of rotting feet. Andrea learns that grasshoppers are better roasted than raw. The radio that they’ve hooked up receives whatever’s still being broadcast: warnings, news bulletin, directions to evacuation centres. _Approach Fort Benning from the north. Group members should routinely examine one another for bites or scratches. Families traveling with small children are advised that evacuation centers in Atlanta are . . ._

 

Andrea turns off the radio.

 

There are good days, too, when being fine is less of a tall order. One evening after dinner, Beth’s new boyfriend finally succeeds in getting the radio to pick up music that’s still bouncing off the satellites. It’s the same dial of classic-rock standards that’s been on a loop for decades, probably, and God knows what happened to the deejay who’s promising Traveling Wilburys, Bad Company, Pure Prairie League, Don Henley, early Aerosmith….But Hershel gets up and starts as much of a slow waltz with Ms. McLeod as he can manage yet with his prosthesis. Almost instantly, his daughters are on their feet – and then almost everyone follows them. “Are you humming along?” Michonne asks.

 

“I guess so.” Andrea grins. “Want me to sing?”

 

“You know the words?”

 

“Are you kidding? I grew up on these stations.”

 

Michonne gives her a look. “Jesus. I fell for the whitest girl on the planet.”

 

“I got a sunburn on my ass once, too.”

 

“You did not.”

 

“Out fishing. It was when low-rise jeans were the thing, and – ”

 

“I don’t want to know.”

 

“I don’t blame you.”

 

Michonne’s a good dancer. Of course she is. And maybe Andrea’s missed dancing, without ever realizing she missed it. They both give in to the sensuality a little bit, and Michonne leans into Andrea, nuzzling her ear. But she isn’t just nuzzling, she’s _whispering_ – Andrea almost doesn’t catch it, but she leans back, asking –

 

“I was a lawyer,” whispers Michonne.

 

Andrea dips her low. “I know.”

 

“I never told – ”

“I knew.”

 

They dance until the signal turns to static, maybe a little bit indecorously – less indecorously than Glenn and Maggie – the hell with it, no one’s keeping track. Out of the corner of her eye, Andrea sees Patrick blushing and giving her a thumbs-up – definitely to hell with it, then. They let go of some more decorum.

 

By the time they get back to their cell, Andrea’s desperate to be closer to Michonne. They’re on the cot as soon as the cover’s drawn, and Andrea kisses her, hard and sloppy. When they break apart, Michonne tilts her head against her pillow. _What do you want?_

 

Andrea kisses Michonne’s ear. “This,” she whispers, just nipping at the lobe, placing Michonne’s hands under her own shirt, kissing Michonne’s neck. Michonne runs her hands over Andrea’s sides.

 

Andrea arches into the touch, but she wants more. She kisses her way down Michonne’s neck, across her clavicles, one hand tangled in Michonne’s hair, the other under her shoulders, pulling her closer. Michonne’s skin tastes like clean sweat, salty and musky; they’re both covered with enough of it that their hands slip, that they almost stick together. Andrea puts suction behind her kisses and gets a stifled moan. A few more of them convince her that Michonne’s shirt has to go, and when it does, she gets her mouth on one of Michonne’s perfect breasts. She lets her hands roam, wanting to touch everywhere at once. Michonne’s stroking Andrea’s hair and rubbing little circles around her ears.

 

They’re still dancing, Andrea thinks giddily: legs entwined, hands roving, Andrea’s shirt and bra on the floor, Michonne gloriously naked as she lowers her head to Andrea’s breasts. She flicks her tongue against one nipple in a little circle, her breath rippling over saliva and sweat, and then moves to the other and sucks, hard.

 

That’s as much as Andrea can stand: she has to get her mouth on Michonne, now, she can’t wait any longer. She puts her hands on Michonne’s feet, those miraculously nimble feet, and strokes her calves as she kisses her way further up Michonne’s leg. Once she gets the top, she doesn’t waste any time, just presses Michonne’s thighs apart and nuzzles her way between them. Michonne’s already wet, and Andrea can feel a damp spot on her own jeans. She rubs herself against the seam as she licks Michonne’s clit like salt on a hot day. Andrea wants to put her hand there, but she’s not greedy, she devotes her fingers to Michonne as well. She rubs harder against the seam as Michonne’s breathing gets harsh and rushed, thinks she’s going to lose her mind when Michonne can’t hold back her moans anymore, and then, unexpectedly, Andrea’s climaxed against the seam of her own goddamn jeans.

 

_“Fuck,”_ whispers Michonne, and Andrea registers it with a delay, knocked off kilter. Michonne’s bringing herself off with her own fingers, she realizes, and at record speed. In no time she’s pulling Andrea back up to kiss her. “Jesus. Next time, I want to see your face.”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“I want to see your face next time,” Michonne repeats.

 

“My face?”

 

Michonne grins against her ear. “Your brain always shut down when you come?”

 

“Not always.”

 

“Sometimes.” Michonne slides her hands down to the front of Andrea’s jeans. “You want me to take these off you right now, or are you going to keep me waiting?”

 

There’s a little spark as Andrea’s brain starts sputtering back to life. “Tonight . . . ”

 

“You’ve had a lot going on tonight,” Michonne says.

 

Andrea nods, grateful. “Yeah.”

 

“Then I’ve got something to look forward to.” Michonne gives her a peck on the lips. “Come on. Let’s get into nightshirts before we fall asleep.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“And I call dibs on being the big spoon.”

 

“Okay.”

 

This time Andrea sees her smile.

 

 

There’s bound to be some fencing left at Woodbury. Plenty of it was _there_ , at any rate, and it’s worth checking, since the most recent herd moved on, to see if anything usable is left. At worst, it’ll be another wasted trip.

 

“I should ask you not to go,” Michonne says.

 

“Are you going to ask me?”

 

“No.”

 

And Andrea’s not going to ask when she’ll know the name of Michonne’s son (not Robert or Louis, but maybe Daniel? It could have been Daniel). “I’ll see you tonight.”

 

“See you then.”  


“Who knows, maybe I’ll have some fencing to show for it.”

 

But she won’t. Andrea sees that before they’re even in Woodbury proper, or what used to be. There isn’t fifty yards’ worth of fencing left to salvage, and not too much more aluminum siding to pull. Glenn and Oscar don’t say a word to each other before they start in on it anyway, not needing to say that _not enough_ isn’t something they can afford to waste. There might be more in the basements still – “You want to keep watch while I check?” Rick asks.

 

“No, Carol can.”

 

Rick gives her a quick, sharp glance. “All right.”

 

And it is all right. The hallway is empty of walkers and of everything else. Andrea’s just walking into another room – some siding’s left; it’s just a place to hold clear while they wait for Glenn to bring the tools. It’s barely familiar to her anymore. Andrea makes out the big dome bones from three or four skulls; they could’ve been anyone’s. The dentist’s chair isn’t gone, precisely, but it’s unrecognizable as much more than stepped-on fragments. Andrea pokes around them and finds a crushed set of pliers crusted with gore.

 

Rick looks away. “Wish I could’ve gone back for him,” he says.

 

“There was no way you could have.”

 

They sit down, and for a few minutes, it’s quiet. The pliers are smaller in Andrea’s hand than they were in her memory.

 

“I told myself I could get Milton to leave with me.”

 

“And you ran when you couldn’t.”

 

“I knew it would be too late.” _Left with the stated intent of…; knew or should have known._ “He wanted Milton to stab me,” she says suddenly.

 

“I know.”

 

“How – ”

 

But of course Rick knew. Andrea doesn’t finish the question.

 

“Governor would’ve killed him anyways, soon enough.”

 

“It would’ve been better if he died alone.”

 

“You sure about that?”

 

“I’m… I don’t know.”

 

(Because Philip might have been able to dream up something worse, even if Andrea can’t. It could have been worse, somehow, than hearing Philip say, _If you keep your eyes on her the whole time, I’ll give her a fair chance to walk out of here alive_. Worse than Milton, who hated making eye contact under the best of circumstances, looking straight at her as he nodded, worse than the way he held her gaze as Philip half-chuckled and said _You could say we’ve reached a gentlemen’s agreement_. Worse than listening Milton, the whole time it was going on, beg Philip to stop and then, when they were alone, that he was sorry.)

 

 “I wish Milton could’ve met Patrick,” Andrea says suddenly. “He’d have been a good big brother for him. They both would have liked that.”

 

“I’m sorry it didn’t happen that way.”

 

“It’s not on you.”

 

“As a cop, you don’t get to tell yourself that,” says Rick.

 

“I thought you weren’t a cop anymore.”

 

Rick shrugs and looks at the floor.

 

 

 

So there was no real amount of fencing to salvage. Andrea can’t give Milton another chance, she can’t give Patrick a big brother, and she can’t give anyone the fencing they need.

 

What she can give them is fish. Even in a hot summer, the few ponds she’s found are teeming. On a good morning, two or three hours’ fishing will yield enough to give everyone half of at least a small fish in the evening. She reminds herself that it’s better than nothing.

 

It’s a cloudy morning when she nets a decent catch within an hour – mostly bass and trout too small to need boning, but edible. And it’ll give her more time at the fence, more walkers cleared. She’s about to reel in the last-try line she’s cast when a pull almost capsizes the inflatable dinghy that Glenn and Oscar almost died to bring her.

 

Andrea’s first thought is that her net’s trapped a walker, and she feels a second’s instinctive terror before she makes out scales. It’s a blue catfish, she guesses; it’s enormous, and must have reached an impossibly great age. It’s messy to deliver the death blow, the dinghy almost capsizing as Andrea robs the fish of its last possible weeks of life. _The way I see it, Amy, if you’re going to put the fish through getting hooked and reeled in, you might as well be doing it for food._

 

Once the thrashing is done, she can see that the fish is almost as long as she is tall, seventy pounds if it’s an ounce, maybe even more. Carol, who’s on shore watch, grins wider than Andrea’s ever seen her when she gets a look at the catch. Even the camouflage walkers, which are pretty much insensible, shuffle in closer.

 

The exhilaration flags as they haul the catch batch, but it returns in full force once they’re inside the gates. Patrick almost knocks the big fish off Andrea’s shoulder in his excitement. “We’ll be eating this for a _week!_ ” he says.

 

It’s too optimistic, even with the smaller fish to supplement him, but Andrea doesn’t tell him that. They’ll all be able to eat their fill tonight. The kids will be able to have _seconds_.

 

“You look awfully happy there, Sunshine,” says Carol, grinning. “Maybe next time I’ll do the fishing, and you can take watch and baby-sit the security detail.”

 

“Not a chance.”

 

“Well, after three hours of their company, I need to pierce a few skulls. And I’m not likely to find them back on the cellblock. It’s empty this time of day.” She looks pointedly at the team on fence duty. “Think Michonne will let me finish her shift?”

 

Andrea grins. “She might.” God, she and Michonne are going to owe Carol for _months_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Image credits (LJ): exclu_silly, color-of-soul, fandom_obsessed.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: References to rape and torture.
> 
> Title credit: Horrorpops, "Walk like a Zombie"


End file.
